And the Truth Will Make You Free
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
Summary: The Doctor presents Janeway with an ethical dilemma involving Voyager's first officer.


TITLE: And the Truth Will Make You Free  
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
SERIES: Star Trek: VOY  
PART: 1/1  
CODES: J, D  
RATING: PG  
SUMMARY: The Doctor approaches Janeway with an ethical dilemma involving another officer. Set sometime during Season Seven.  
  
  
And the Truth Will Make You Free  
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring  
  
  
"Thank you, Doctor," Janeway said, accepting the padd he proffered and glancing over it. Normally, it would have been Chakotay's job to handle departmental reports, but the first officer was off-duty today, enjoying some rare but well-earned rest-and-recreation. Besides, the captain enjoyed taking a more active role in personnel management sometimes. Probably, she decided, *because* she didn't have to do it every day.  
  
The EMH made a little throat-clearing noise, and she looked up, to see him watching her-nervously? Apprehensively? "Is there something else, Doctor?" she prompted, when he seemed reluctant to make any further vocalizations.  
  
The Doctor looked away for a moment, then said, in the most diffident tone she had ever heard from him, "Captain, I'd like to ask your advice about something. An -- ethical matter."  
  
The Doctor seldom approached her with ethical problems, but when he did, they were invariably doozies. She could still remember the furor over his re-creation of Krell Moset, and silently hoped his current issue wasn't anything on that order. Still, even if it was, better that he'd come to her *before* acting, this time. "Of course, Doctor." She smiled, trying to reassure him (and, perhaps, herself as well). "What's on your mind?"  
  
He ignored her gesture toward the chair. "It involves a decision I made some time ago, concerning an officer on this ship. I thought I was acting in the best interests of Voyager, and of the officer involved, but now I'm not so sure. And I don't know what I should do now."  
  
She frowned, puzzled at his circuitousness. "Are you talking about a medical decision?"  
  
He looked uncomfortable. "Yes and no."  
  
She lifted cupped hands upward in the manual equivalent of a shrug. "Doctor, I'm afraid I can't help you unless you give me a little more information."  
  
"Very well." The Doctor actually paced a few steps before he looked at her again. "This concerns Commander Chakotay."  
  
"All right," she said, keeping her voice even. He had said it wasn't a medical problem (well, not exactly), so there was no cause for immediate concern. She waited more-or-less patiently for him to get to the point.  
  
The Doctor looked away again. "I know I don't have to ask if you remember our most recent involvement with Ensign Seska."  
  
"The holodeck program," she deduced promptly, remembering the trap Seska had set in Tuvok's "Insurrection: Alpha" training program.  
  
"No," he said, a little impatiently. "Not the holodeck program. The living ensign."  
  
Considering that their last encounter with Seska had cost Janeway the lives of several of her crew, and very nearly cost Voyager itself, the captain wasn't ever likely to forget it, or her. "Of course I remember."  
  
"Then you remember what the object of our efforts was then -- why we risked Voyager against the Kazon."  
  
"Of course. Chakotay's child. Or, rather," she corrected, "the child we thought might be Chakotay's." It seemed that even Seska herself had thought that her son was the genetic offspring of Voyager's first officer, her former lover, but the Doctor's tests had shown otherwise: proven that, for all the Cardassian spy's machinations, her child had been begotten by her Kazon lover, Culluh.  
  
Steady holographic eyes met hers. "You were right the first time," the EMH said quietly.  
  
The captain blinked, startled. "Excuse me?"  
  
"You were right the first time. The child was -- since we have no reason to think he's not alive, I should say, the child *is* -- Commander Chakotay's."  
  
"But your tests showed--" she protested, a little stupidly.  
  
"My tests showed what I wanted them to show," he said harshly. "I knew that, sooner or later, Seska would want confirmation of the paternity of her child. Before she came to Sickbay, I designed a file that would show the child was half-Kazon. Half-Culluh."  
  
"Doctor," she asked, uncertainly, "why?"  
  
He snorted a little. "Why lie to Seska? Why not?" More seriously, he went on, "Because I needed every edge I could get if we were going to have a chance of getting Voyager back. I thought, if I could do something to shake that terrible confidence of hers, it might help us a little. And besides," he finished dryly, "I have to admit it gave me a certain amount of satisfaction to wipe that smug look off her face."   
  
"You *did* run tests, though?" she clarified.  
  
"I took readings on the baby while he was in Sickbay, but I didn't run the *real* analysis until after he and his mother left. Let me show you the results." Wordlessly, she swung her monitor around to face him, and he tapped at the keys. "Here." He swung the monitor around to face her again. "You see?"  
  
She studied the genetic sequence that had taken form on the viewscreen, her scientist's training letting her interpret the data easily. "Doctor, there's human DNA in this sequence."  
  
"That's what I'm telling you. And, as if there were any question as to *which* human...." He tapped at the keys again, and the screen split into two sections, one with the previous sequence, the second with another genetic code, the latter wholly human. "This--" the Doctor indicated the second sequence, "is Commander Chakotay's."  
  
The similarities between the two sequences were unmistakable. "This," she tapped the first with a fingernail, "is Chakotay's son." She shook her head, a little shocked, a little numb. "You knew this while we were still in Kazon space."  
  
"I knew it while the Kazon were still on Voyager."  
  
"Then, when you told Chakotay that was Culluh's child, you lied to him." She remembered the expression on her first officer's face when he had received the news, an odd mix of relief, chagrin, shame, and -- perhaps -- disappointment. She remembered her own feelings as well, some chagrin, but (she admitted honestly) more relief than anything else: if Seska was dead, and the child was Culluh's, then any conflict between Voyager and the Kazon was over. "And to me."  
  
The Doctor didn't look at her. "Yes."  
  
"Why?"  
  
He looked back, then, a plea written in his all-too-alive eyes. "Captain, do you remember the situation we were in at the time? Between the Kazon, Mister Suder, myself, and our Talaxian friends, Voyager was in shambles. She could never have stood up to another fight with the Kazon. The Talaxians were willing to escort us out of the heart of Kazon space, but that was all. They'd never have helped us if we tried to engage the Kazon again." He extended his hands in front of him, palms up, fingers widespread, as if he were making her an offering. "Don't you see -- I was just trying to save us from a fight we couldn't win."  
  
"And Chakotay? Did he have any rights in this?"  
  
"I assumed that, if he knew the truth, he'd want to go back and try to recover the child again." The Doctor took a few steps away, then paced back. "If the rest of the crew decided to support him, as they had before, the whole ship would be in grave danger. Especially considering that the Maje thought the child was his."  
  
"Because of what you'd told Seska, and she would have told him."  
  
The Doctor nodded briefly, his pained expression acknowledging the hit. "Yes. And if the crew chose not to support the commander -- another distinct possibility -- I thought it was very likely he would make the attempt on his own, as he did when Seska and her allies stole our transporter module. And when the Kazon captured him -- well, we'd just beaten Culluh, and cost him Seska. What do you think he would have done to Chakotay?"  
  
It didn't take much imagination to guess the answer to that one. In addition to any other reasons he might have for antipathy against Voyager's first officer, Culluh believed Chakotay had raped and brutalized Seska while he'd been held prisoner on Culluh's ship. (How Chakotay had done that when he'd been beaten and drugged beggared imagination, but then logic had never been Culluh's strong point.) The Kazon leader would have slain Chakotay slowly and painfully, taking care to prolong the agony as much as possible. From what Janeway knew of the Kazon, there were two things they were experts at: abuse and murder. And Maje Culluh was certainly representative of his race.  
  
When she said nothing, the Doctor supplied the answer himself. "Culluh would have killed him, Captain."  
  
"No doubt," she acknowledged, drawing in a breath. "But you made a great many assumptions as to what we -- and the commander -- would do, Doctor. We did have other options."  
  
"True. We could have chosen to abandon the child." His earnestness was almost painful to see. "Have you examined the cultural database recently, Captain? Do you know what it would mean, for someone from Chakotay's tribe to voluntarily turn his back on a child?"  
  
"He was willing to consider it before." But here her memory betrayed her, for she remembered the clear torment on her first officer's face when he had announced his intent to leave the child -- whom he'd then believed to be his own -- among the Kazon.   
  
"He was distraught," the Doctor said sharply. She inclined her head, her recollection too clear for her to even attempt giving that remark the lie. "He would have regretted the choice."  
  
She inclined her head again. "You're probably right, Doctor," she acknowledged shortly.  
  
"I *am* right. Check the database yourself if you don't believe me."  
  
"I believe you. But abandoning the child wasn't our only alternative." She stood, palms pressing down on the desk, and looked him in the eye. "We could have assembled a strike force to extract him. We could have engaged a mercenary team for the job. We could have tried to bribe one of the Kazon, maybe let him know that the heir apparent was really an outsider. We could have tried to infiltrate them with a surgically-altered agent. We could have tried to cloak a shuttle and get close enough to beam the child out."  
  
The Doctor stared, thunderstruck. "Do you mean to tell me we really could have done all that?"  
  
"I don't know, Doctor," she said levelly. "But if you had told us the truth from the outset, we could have evaluated all of those possibilities, and maybe come up with a few more. I don't know if we could have come up with something that would have had a high probability of success -- and it's rather a moot point now, don't you think?"  
  
"You're angry at me," the Doctor said, sounding somewhat surprised.  
  
"You're damned right I'm angry at you." She pushed away from her desk, taking a few short, sharp steps before fixing a glare on him. "What right did you have to assume that we wouldn't react rationally in that situation? What right did you have to make the choices for the commander? For this crew? For me?"  
  
"I was doing what I thought was in the best interests of this crew!"  
  
"I applaud your motives, Doctor. But I abhor your actions." She stopped short at a thought. "You said you were considering an ethical choice, Doctor? Did you mean in the present tense? A choice you're making now?"  
  
"Yes, I--"  
  
"Don't do it," she said sharply.  
  
He was clearly surprised. "How do you know what I was considering?"  
  
"You were considering telling him now, weren't you?"  
  
Apparently that intuitive arrow had struck its mark, for the Doctor looked astounded. "Yes."  
  
"I'm telling you, don't do it."  
  
"But, Captain," he said, again with that almost-painful earnestness. "He has a right to the truth."  
  
"He had a right to the truth four years ago," she said brutally.  
  
"I can't change what I did four years ago, Captain!" Contrition shone in those empathetic eyes. "I can only decide what to do now."  
  
"Then decide to keep your mouth shut," she commanded.  
  
He was hurt as well as bewildered. "I don't understand. I thought it would be better if he knew the truth."  
  
"Better for who?" she said quietly. "For him? Or for you?" She came around the edge of the desk so that she could stare him down face-to-face. "Doctor, if you'd been honest with us four years ago, we might have been able to do something about the situation. But would you mind telling me what he can do about it *now*?" He opened his mouth, but was apparently unable to form the words. "I'll tell you what he can do. Nothing. We're decades away from the Kazon at high warp, and there's nothing Chakotay, or any of us, can do for that child now no matter how motivated we might be. He can't do anything but sit there in his cabin at night and let that knowledge eat him alive -- the knowledge that he has a son he's never held, and barely seen, who he left to be raised by barbarians. A son who will grow up thinking he's Kazon, who will never even know Chakotay is his father. You tell me, Doctor -- how will it be *better* if he knows that?"  
  
The EMH's face crumpled, tacitly acknowledging her point.  
  
"I won't let you salve your conscience at that price, Doctor. You've made your bed; now you'll have to lie in it." He looked away, sadly. "Since you concealed vital information from your commanding officers, I have the right to discipline you, Doctor. But I'd have to advise Commander Chakotay of any disciplinary actions, and he'd want to know the reason. I'm afraid your own thoughts will have to be punishment enough."  
  
"Yes, Captain," the physician acknowledged quietly, looking as defeated as she'd ever seen him.  
  
"Dismissed."  
  
After he left, she stared at the closed door, and remembered: the agony and the pleading in Chakotay's voice when he told her he'd decided he wanted to rescue the child. The awkwardness he'd displayed around her, around all of the crew, after he'd been told the child for whom they'd risked so much was not even his. His diffidence in the presence of Naomi Wildman, the younger Brenari -- for that matter, around most children. The silent longing in his eyes whenever the topic of children came up.  
  
He would want to know the truth, she knew, no matter how much it hurt him. If he ever learned that she had known, and concealed it from him, he would never forgive her. The Doctor wasn't the only one who had looked up Chakotay's culture and his customs at the time of that whole sad business with Seska. Janeway knew that, by the traditions which (despite his youthful resistance) had been graven into her first officer's soul, the child of his body was a child of his People, with all the rights that entailed. According to Chakotay's beliefs, if he could not offer his son physical protection, he could at least name the boy before the Sky Spirits and invoke Their spiritual protection for him. Chakotay would say that, by denying him the truth, Janeway also denied him the opportunity to give the child the only gift that remained within his power.  
  
But in a real, practical sense, what difference did it make, whether Chakotay prayed for the child or not? Though she respected the sincerity of believers, Janeway did not truly think that invoking a god or gods had any measurable effect on course of the universe. Gods did not exist. Her first officer's grief, on the other hand, would exist, as real and tangible as the effect it would have on the rest of the crew. Chakotay had come to an uneasy peace with himself in the time since Seska's death; should she disrupt that now, in the name of something so intangible as truth?   
  
Of course not, she told herself firmly. What would be the point?  
  
Some quotations picked that moment to come to the surface of her mind. One was one of the mottoes of Starfleet Academy. //The first duty of a Starfleet officer is to the truth.//  
  
The second was centuries older. //Honesty is the best policy.//  
  
The third was older still. //Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.//  
  
The captain rubbed her forehead, wearily. //Who the *hell*//, she asked herself, //comes up with these things?// Certainly it was no one who had ever set foot in the Delta Quadrant.  
  
END 


End file.
